Speaker
Description
Planetary radiation belts form a major hazard to orbiting satellites and predicting their variability is a primary goal of space weather forecasting efforts. While radiation belt dynamics are well-approximated by the Fokker Planck diffusion equation representing transport in energy, radial distance and pitch angle, more realistic magnetic field models and diffusive-advective transport have been shown to be important during storm-time scenarios. This study investigates the dynamics of high-energy radiation belts by analyzing the trajectories of test particles within Earth's magnetic field. We evaluate multiple relativistic particle integrators which resolve the full Lorentz particle motion and the guiding centre, and examine their effectiveness in simulating the test particles within fields generated by analytical and global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. The focus of the assessment includes the conservation of adiabatic invariants and minimization of interpolation errors to identify the most accurate and efficient techniques for modeling the Earth’s radiation belt using this approach. Following the theoretical uncertainty quantification, we seek to model a series of geomagnetic storms and quantify the model uncertainties for these real events.
